


freefall

by Blue_Rive



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Cecil Palmer's Fashion Sense, Disassociative Cecil Palmer, Episode: e167 Echo, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Just a short lil fic, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, as usual it rachets between the two wildly, but it deals w/ some stuff from that, but probably something similar to that, cecilos really invented love huh, idk i'm not going to give a diagnose here, it's not as overt here as it is in my other fic but. he's got a lot of problems, it's not necessarily directly post that arc, no beta we die like interns, thank you so much i am rubbish at titles, that's just my brand at this point, title suggested by @kurofae/tate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive
Summary: In which air travel is even worse than usual, specifically for Cecil and Carlos.
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	freefall

**Author's Note:**

> a short one shot bc i haven't been publishing that much! (this is bc all my wips have grown into >10k monsters)

Cecil didn’t go on planes often. Night Vale had an airport, of course, but he’d never seen the point in just flying around and around in circles, no matter how much  _ certain people  _ extolled how fun, comfortable, and nice air travel was, and if it came down to actually  _ going  _ somewhere, he didn’t really leave Night Vale that often.

Carlos had insisted that they not go to the Night Vale airport, anyway. Cecil had told him that they’d caught a plane from the airport to go on their vacation trip, and so he didn’t see the problem, and then  _ Carlos  _ had said something sciency about dimensions that Cecil made sure to pretend he understood. So they went to the Flagstaff* airport instead.

*Flagstaff was a very silly name for a town, in Cecil’s opinion. Why smash two words together like that? And it didn’t even  _ mean  _ anything. Night Vale it was night a lot, because the sun forgot to rise sometimes, and it  _ would  _ have been in a valley if mountains existed. Which they did not. 

His antlers were a problem, apparently, and his third eye, but luckily Cecil had a  _ lot  _ of very exciting-looking hats and scarves he could cover them up with. This meant that he got a lot of people admiring* his fashion, and no people talking about how scientifically interesting it was, or trying to blind him, or screaming.**

*At least, that’s what Cecil decided they were doing. 

**Those tended to be the general reaction of  _ outsiders.  _ He generally favored the first one, which had been Carlos’ reaction, but the third one was probably a few steps above the second one. 

They managed to make it to the plane fairly easily, not counting the time Cecil was stopped because he was complaining very loudly about the confusing layout and the general lack of mute, dead-eyed children there to assist them, and now they were on board.

Cecil curiously poked at the screen, scrolling through various TV shows and movies that seemed to be alternate-reality versions of the typical Night Vale fare. “Does this count as a computer? Because my license expired a while ago and so I’ve been making the interns do all of that for me.” Going to City Hall to get your license renewed was a  _ nightmare,  _ with all the long lines, inefficient bureaucracy, and screaming shadow beings who’d always be yelling things like  _ Cecil, please help me! You’re the only one who can, please, don’t you recognize me,  _ etc.  _ Ugh.  _

“Different jurisdiction, so it doesn’t matter,” Carlos said distractedly. “It’s going to be twenty minutes or so before stuff happens, so might as well get comfortable.”

_ “Twenty minutes?”  _ Cecil complained. “That’s like, half the flight time already!” 

“They need to wait for everyone to board and make sure no one’s not in their seat or putting up luggage or anything,” Carlos explained. “Did you know, though, it only takes about 35 seconds to take off? The plane needs to get to about 160 to 180 miles per hour, and then it starts to lift off the ground.” 

Cecil scrolled through some more shows. Weirdly, there seemed to be a lack of the blood and gore that was in most children’s classic Disney movies. “And how does that work, love?” 

Carlos continued to ramble as Cecil half-listened, asking an appropriate question every so often. Personally, he’d always thought that planes worked on dark magic, but Carlos insisted that that wasn’t the case. Cecil was fairly convinced that all of this  _ lift  _ and  _ velocity  _ stuff was fake news. The dark magic stuff was a basic scientific fact, same as the moon being invented by time travelers and sent up into the sky in 1516 to further cover up the faked moon landing in 1969. 

He’d finally picked a movie to watch, with Carlos’ enthusiastic endorsement that it was his favorite movie and way different from the Night Vale version. He settled back in his chair, reclining it as far as it could go (to the annoyance of the person behind him), put on his headphones, and resigned himself to waiting around for what felt like  _ forever.  _

He’s up to the bit where it skips forward in time and the main character’s her normal age, and more and more differences are starting to appear. Like, for one, her knife is missing, and for another, ‘coconuts’ are a kind of fruit or something instead of small aggressive forest animals. “We should-” the main character started to say, but then she was interrupted by a loud buzzing noise, and a voice filled Cecil’s ears.

“Hello, this is your pi-”

Cecil froze.  _ No no no this can’t be happening he can’t be back in my head-  _ He tried to pull his headphones off, using too much force and getting them tangled in his hair, shaky hands trying to wrest them off, to  _ get out the voice-  _ he managed to get them off, but it was  _ still in his head,  _ and outside, too, echoing around the plane compartment. He’d thought- he’d thought that Amelia had killed the pilot- unless that had been a trick? He clamped his hands over his ears, trying to block out the voice. He already knew that it wouldn’t work- it was inside his head, covering his ears didn’t  _ do  _ anything- except it did, the sound was muted, but he didn’t- he didn’t know what that  _ meant,  _ he was trying so, so hard to think clearly and he  _ couldn’t,  _ it was all  _ too much,  _ just like when all those voices were in his head, talking and talking and  _ talking-  _

He’d started muttering under his breath at some point, narrating everything that was going on- his job, his second nature, the only way he could think of to drown out the voices, he needed to talk, louder than them, but that didn’t mean that it would be  _ quiet-  _ Carlos. Where was Carlos?

Oh, good, Carlos was next to him, not missing or taken away, not  _ dragged  _ away by the passengers of Flight 18713, but that was bad, wasn’t it, because he’d refused to run, he hadn’t done it that first time either, no matter how much Cecil begged, he wouldn’t abandon him- and, oh no, Carlos was panicking, too, reaching around for some kind of weapon, maybe,  _ something  _ that he could do, but there wasn’t anything-

The voice had faded away, Cecil realized distantly, but that didn’t mean they were  _ safe,  _ did it?  _ Just- think about Carlos, think about Carlos, think about- not being here, okay, Cecil, you can do this-  _ A soft touch on his arm brought him back to reality, and Carlos  _ safe, alive  _ looking at him with concern, as well as a few other passengers on the plane.

“Cecil. Cecil, it’s okay. That’s over. Just- just talk to me, okay? If that helps?” Carlos’ voice broke, and Cecil could see just how shaken his husband was.

“Right, right- the voices- okay. Are you okay?” 

“I- I don’t know. I want to  _ do  _ something, but there’s nothing that I can do to help, or to stop this. The pilot’s not- he’s not  _ the  _ pilot, he’s just someone who works for this airline company, and I can’t try to fight against him, he didn’t do anything.” 

Right. Okay. They were on a plane, and pilots flew planes, and that didn’t mean it was the  _ same  _ pilot.

  
They were okay, at least for now. Carlos was with him. And- and it was  _ quiet,  _ and that’s what makes the tension go out of Cecil’s shoulders, lets him take a few deep breaths, lets him come back to himself. They were safe. 

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you liked!!


End file.
